Self/No-Self
I'm sitting in my living room, staring at the thin layer of snow on the rooftops outside. Sometimes I want to act like a kid and just play outside. Even in the wild cold. It's 28 degrees outside and I want to feel the freshness around my face.
But the minute I go out there, I will freeze up and become an adult again. Much of adulthood is the need to control oneself, to not be free or act silly. To not have fun because life is 'hard.'
It's true that life is hard. My body hurts because I've been exercising and it wasn't the fun kind where kids are running around at recess. I miss recess in school and naps. I was so good at naps. That is one of things that has stayed with me all these years.
I feel like I had more to say when I was a kid. I would talk and talk with my friends and laugh and laugh. I was so good at talking and laughing, I wish you could major in talking and laughing in college. I would have had a dual degree.
What is there to say now except that I'm tired and older and I wish I could be as carefree as a young child playing in the backyard. Remember monkey bars? I remember flipping back and forth on them.
I am aware that childhood is not all games and fun, there are a lot of mixed feelings when you are a kid. I remember being bullied in kindergarten. I remember feeling alone at recess. Sometimes I would just sit on the bench at recess and not play with the other kids for no apparent reason. What was that about?
Do you feel like you are the same person you were when you were a child? Do we actually change identities when we move into adulthood? I feel like I am a different person than I was when I was twelve. But perhaps I'm not even the same person I was yesterday. The only thing we do for sure is change. The only thing we are for sure is different than we were before.
What is my identity if I keep changing as a person? Who am I after all if I can change so much at any given moment? Do I even have an identity? Am I making up the idea that I have a self at all? There is a conundrum in Buddhism where one has to grapple with the issue of self/no-self. Do we have separate identities than the source of all things, or are we just a little part of something bigger?
If you and I have like about 99% of the same genetic make-up than what makes me unique? I like to think I'm my own person. But when I was a kid I didn't think about that. Was I still my own person then? If I become enlightened and merge with the One
I wonder sometimes why I even have this obsession with the idea that I am a distinct being, that I am different than anyone else. That I have a self that is uniquely mine. Sometimes I think this is a very American idea. In other countries, often people think of themselves as more a part of a community than an individual self. Their identity comes from their relationship to other people.
Why do we have this fierce need to be indapendant from other people in this country? I have this need myself and wonder sometimes if I would be happier if I just thought of myself as part of a group. Because truthfully I have never really felt that I fit in truly anywhere, with any group. Could this be because I have bought into the notion that I am so different than everyone else?
I want to be distinct and belong at the same time. Is this asking too much? Do I have to be one or the other? I'm not sure why I've never felt like I fit in completely with any group of people. Will anyone really be able to solve the riddle of self/no-self?
I like to think there is a self and there is a group that one can fit into, and one can be both things at the same time. The only reality is I'm not sure who my group is and I'm not sure who my self is.
Yet they both exist and are ever-changing.
nina